College and Research Libraries 78 College & Research Libraries January 1988 9. Clifford H. Haka and Nancy Ursery, "Inventory Costs: A Case Study," College & Research Libraries 46:169-72 (Mar. 1985). The authors indicate that they found "thousands of misshelved materials" but do not give details, "Letters," College & Research Libraries 47:83-84 (Jan. 1986). 10. R. E. Beck and J. R. McKinnon, "Development of Methods and Time Standards for a Large-Scale Library Inventory," in Case Studies in Systems Analysis in a University Library, ed. Barton R. Burkhal- ter (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1968), p.48-75. 11. Glenn R. Lowry, "A Heuristic Collection Loss Rate Determination Methodology: An Alternative to Shelf-Reading," Collection Management 4:73-83 (Spring/Summer 1982). 12. Barbara P. Pinzelik, Monitoring Book Losses in a Large Academic Library: Four Methods (Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Univ. Libraries, 1979), p.ll-16 (ED 203 852). 13. Margaret Johnson Bennett, David T. Buxton, and Ella Caprioti, "Shelf Reading in a Large Open Stack Library," Journal of Academic Librarianship 5:4-8 (Mar. 1979). 14. A conservative sample from the assumed 1,645 shelves (7 x 235) to give a confidence interval of 5% at the .05level of significance is about 314. Herbert Arkin, Handbook of Sampling for Auditing and Accounting (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963}, V.1, p.370. One of 5 shelves is 329. In the event, with 1,497 shelves (counted later}, the actual sample is quite larger than required. 15. Ralph M. Daehn, "The Measurement and Projection of Shelf Space," Collection Management 4:25-39 (Winter 1982); Keyes D. Metcalf, Philip D. Leighton, and David C. Weber, Planning Aca- demic and Research Library Buildings (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1986), p.155-56. Dissertations-An Online Dilemma Donald K. Hartman and Manuel D. Lopez There are few bibliographic aids available to the online searcher who has questions concerning dissertations and theses and the extent of their coverage by the various databases. A compari- son of two databases concerned with this "for- mat" material is not completely reassuring, while the survey of the individual databases cited did provide useful information for the on- line searcher and contributes to reducing the uncertainty of the situation. THE PROBLEM That uncomfortable feeling of uncer- tainty is back. As an academic librarian, information broker, or online searcher in a corporate structure you have just com- pleted a computerized search. The cita- tions are relevant but include several ref- erences to dissertations and/or theses. Does t~at mean you don't have to search Dissertation Abstracts Online? Questions nag. When did the database just searched start to include dissertations/theses? Were citations to dissertations added retrospec- tively? What about foreign dissertations? Are they included? If so, which countries? Just what percentage of the database is dissertations? The directory Computer- Readable Databases does indicate percent- ages but only in combinations of formats. What were the criteria used for selection of dissertations? Who assigned the subject headings/descriptors? The author, data- base personnel, or others? Was a thesau- rus used? If so, which one? THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS A search by document type ( dt =theses? or dt=dissertation? or dt=doctoral?) of Donald K. Hartman and Manuel D. Lopez are reference librarians at the State University of New York, Buffalo, New York 14260. the Database of Databases (file 230 on Dia- log) indicated that over 300 databases in- cluded dissertations and/or theses. The search was refined to those vendors thought to be most heavily used by online searchers: BRS, Dialog and SDC (the search procedure is shown in figure 1). This ·reduced the number of databases listed as having dissertations or theses, by document type, to 153. Questionnaires were sent to 142 database producers. Be- cause seventeen of the cited databases were subsets of larger ones (e.g., Agricul- tural Abstracts, which is a subset of CAB Abstracts), the questionnaires sent to the 142 producers actually involved a total of 159 databases. There were 106 returns: 66 respondents indicated that disserta- tions/theses were part of their databases, 40 database producers stated that disserta- tions and theses were not included in their services. The initial search strategy pro- vided citations to a number of databases that in fact did not include disserta- tions/theses. This may have been the result of the use of a standardized phrase-''Monographs, proceedings, Research Notes 79 theses" -in Database of Databases to de- scribe the scope of a particular database when it did not include one or more of the formats covered by that phrase. A search of Knowledge Industry Publica- tions Database (file KIPD on BRS) produced 69 citations to databases having disserta- tions or theses as a document type (see fig- ure 1). Fifty of these databases had been .listed in the first search. Thirty-two of these had responded to the first question- naire, and among these respondents, 26 included the required materials. Ques- tionnaires were sent to the remaining 19 database producers; all 13 respondents did include dissertations/theses. It is notable that the search of Database of Databases did not provide a reference to Dissertation Abstracts Online, which in- cludes about 99 percent of American dis- sertations (more than 850,000 since 1862), thousands of Canadian dissertations, and those from about 200 foreign universities. While author and keyword in-title index- ing in Dissertation Abstracts Online pro- vides adequate access with some "noise" or unwanted citations, the practice of hav- SEARCH PROCEDURE FOR DATAQASE Of DATABASES ? s dt=theses? or dt=dissertation? or dt = doctoral ? 398 DT=THESES? 3 DT=DISSERTATION? DT=DOCTORAL? 51 399 DT=THESES ? OR DT=DISSERTATION? OR DT = DOCTORAL? ? s ve=brs or ve = dialog or ve=sdc 96 265 81 VE=8RS VE=DIALOG VE=SDC 52 356 VE=8RS OR VE=DIALOG OR VE=SDC ? s sl and s2 399 sl 356 s2 53 153 s1 and s2 SEARCH PROCEDURE FOR KNQWLEDGE INDUSTRY PUBLICATIONS QATABASE dissertations$.dt. or doctoral$.dt. theses$ . dt. RESULT 251 2 brs.vi. or dialog. v i. or sdc.vi. 3 RESULT 1 and 2 RESULT 371 DOCUMENTS 69 DOCUMENTS FIGURE 1 Search Procedure 80 College & Research Libraries January 1988 ing authors assign subject headings can result in "lost" references. Considering the volume of research and information available in this "format" database and the scope and limitations of other data- bases containing dissertations and ab- stracts, the online searcher should not ig- nore this particular resource. findings, the searcher should be wary of assuming that a database with a large per- centage of dissertations is comprehensive. For example, dissertations in The Middle East: Abstracts and Index represent only about .025 percent of the database, but that percentage represents 300-400 disser- tations about this very specific topic within an annual volume of some 16,000 citations and is quite comprehensive in this area. Also, the producers of this data- base manually review Dissertation Ab- stracts International, thus avoiding the va- garies of subject headings and keyword indexing. This approach has disadvan- tages as well. However, because the pro- ducers limit themselves to DAI, significant research may be overlooked, as not every university (e.g., Harvard and, until re- cently, University of Chicago) participates Other differences between the Database of Databases (list A) and Knowledge Industry Publication Database (list B) are indicated in table 1. While the B list was numerically smaller, 66 percent of its cited databases did, in fact, include dissertations/theses, while only 42 percent of the databases in list A made the same claim. The file-by-file results of our survey may be useful in resolving some of the prob- lems of the online searcher. These results are shown in table 2. In interpreting these TABLE 1 Database Profiles ·-----------------------------------------------~ ·-----------------------------,--------·--------~ I Questionnaire Summaries 11 Database b>atabase I I I A I B I I I I I ·-----------------------------·--------1--------~ I N f c· . I 1 I I 1 o. o 1tat1ons 1 159 1 69 1 I I I I I I I I I I I I ·-----------------------------·--------~--------, I No. of Databases Queried I 142 I 19 2 I I I I I I I I I I I I I ~-----------------------------~--------1--------1 I I I I I . I I I 1 No. Respond1ng 1 106 1 13 1 I . I I I I I I I ~-----------------------------~--------1--------1 I I I I I No. of Positive Responses : 66 I 45 I I I I I I I I I ~-----------------------------~--------1--------1 I I I I I No. of Negative Responses I 40 I I I I I I I I I I ~-----------------------------~--------1--------, I I I I I No Response I 36 I 24 : I I I I I I I I ~-----------------------------~--------·--------1 1. Seventeen databases were subsets . 2. Fifty of the databases had been cited in the first search . Of that number, eighteen failed to respond. Of the thirty-two respondents, twenty-six indicated that they included dissertations /theses, and six said they did not. Research Notes 81 in the program. The problem is com- pounded by the fact that many institu- tions that are project members do not sub- mit all of their dissertations. Survey results indicate that in the area of dissertations/theses, caution should be the prime guide of the online searcher. TABLE2 Summary of Questionnaire # ! ., ~" ., ..._.I •. :" J ;y I :-~" .... I ... ~ ti ., .,.. .J ... • :..e>. a~ ~ .A :ti ~ ~ '3 ~ I, :$ • ;: ~- ...,.::~ ~ :.."" 19 cY .,c. I, "i c. ., ~ ... ~· ~ /j t:! .,(1 '().